


The Many Names of Rose Tyler

by JustAnotherGhostwriter



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Pete's World speculation, this one actually ties in with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 11:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAnotherGhostwriter/pseuds/JustAnotherGhostwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set from post Doomsday to beyond Journey's End. Rose Tyler finds that the general population of Pete's World insists on giving her different names. Some are grand, some are insulting, some are endearing but none really fit. Until she brings her Doctor home. <br/>AKA: a look at the identities Rose Tyler portrays to the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Many Names of Rose Tyler

**Author's Note:**

> Creative License: Use, reblog to Tumblr/LJ etc , edit, destroy etc as you will. I don’t care. Just if it is used for fic or art in some way please consider linking me? I love reading/looking.
> 
> Author’s Note: This plagued me for my whole double journalism tutorial so I had to bash it out even though I have so much work I want to scream and even though it has NO context what-so-ever. Just another scene from a fanfiction I will never write. (And because I've wanted to use The Lightning ever since about episode six of season one.)

Naturally, the world had been confused when she'd turned up. Not as confused as they should have been - as she'd worried they'd be - because, quite honestly, a Cybermen invasion kind of trumped the appearance of Pete Tyler's mysterious long-lost daughter.

 

So while there were articles and interviews and press conferences and police investigations and far too many jokes made about it, it took only about a month before the story that she'd been hidden from the world so that she could grow up unhounded by the press and the pressures of being the Vitex Heiress, until the Cybermen happened and Pete and Jackie couldn't bare to have her out of their sight any more was accepted and she was left alone.

 

Interestingly, that was the point she started getting the nicknames. To the press, she was Vitex Heiress Rose Tyler, who never gave them enough gossip to make them like her. Ragamuffin Rose, who stuck out like a sore thumb in the mansion she now called home. The Tyler Troll-child, finally pulled from her tower because there were scarier things than having your face splashed in the papers. In Torchwood, the nicknames varied depending on which group of people you talked to.

 

In the beginning, she'd just been "The Newcomer". Then, as people started to get to know her - as they began to listen to how much she knew about aliens, as they watched her save their lives and delegate and diffuse potentially earth-shattering situations all with an air they could not name - they started calling her different things.

 

"The Alien Whisperer." Luckily that one had phased out quite quickly. "The Freak". That one _still_ cropped up every now and then, and she was bothered by it even less than she had been when it had first started its whispered journey around the halls and rooms of Torchwood One. "The Otherworldly Girl". This had started out trying to explain why she knew so much when she _shouldn't_ but it had stuck simply because it wasn't difficult to see that Rose Tyler didn't belong in this world. It wasn't only the things she said - references to movies and books and events that were pure fantasy to them - or how she sometimes looked at their technology with a completely baffled air. It was also the fact that she seemed to move in a completely different way, as though her heart beat on a different timeline to everybody else's. She was always out of step with everybody - her friends, the aliens she encountered and even her family.

 

Then she started with her whole "Violence should be the _very last resort_ " campaign - relentless and uncompromising she was - and opinions split again. Some admired her for it; saw where she was coming from and were willing to change ammo to stunners. Others called her "The Species Traitor", "The Alien Hugger", "The One Who Will Let Them Take Us Over." Rose fought those who opposed her with grace and a fire in her eyes that had never been there before. When the Torchwood Board voted her ideas in, and the laws against Alien Violence were drafted, she ignored the mutters and the cries that said the decision was only because her father was Director and gave her attackers a silent, icy glare that seemed to be learnt from somebody else (it was partly her mother, a lot of her haters learnt later.)

 

She got promoted, and her name changed to The Lieutenant. Or, as those who adored her - worshipped her almost - shortened it to: "Boss". As she had since she'd arrived in Torchwood One she told everybody to "just call her _Rose_ ". Only her mother, her father and Agent Mickey Smith adhered to her request. Even Agent Jake Simmonds - who had become best friends with the heiress almost before the world knew about her, somehow - called her _Rosie_ instead of her preferred term. And Tony called her Wose - another one to add to the growing list.

 

Nobody ever knew that she was building a Dimension Cannon except the small team she trusted with her idea and her life. But people knew she was up to _something_ \- she barely ate, barely slept, was like a drug addict strung out and desperate and she _didn't care_. They called her "The Crazy". "The Lunatic". "The One Who Snapped." "Don't do a Tyler on me" became a well-used phrase after the tabloids took the three candid pictures snapped of their usually flawless and well-behaved heiress and made up stories worthy of a best-selling fiction novel as to why she suddenly looked like a ghost. That was the one thing she’d been upset about; when a tabloid had called her the Ghost Leader of an Army of Ghosts.

 

Unknown to the world, Rose Tyler made a cross-dimension jump. And another. And another. And another. Her plans worked and they didn’t. She didn’t get any better. Quickly, the negative nicknames got new followers and the world began to anticipate an actual (hopefully very public) breakdown. The pink and yellow girl of many names simply kept quiet, kept her head thrust up and her eyes burning and spent her time only with those who still called her Boss, Rose, Rosie or Wose.

 

One unfortunate writer finally tried to link her covert operations with the reason the stars were going out, blaming the Otherwordly Girl for their problems and bringing up Torchwood One internal politics to paint a picture of an inhumane weirdo with a human’s face. Jackie got to him first. Pete dealt with the little of him that was left, in a way that was much more professional and calm but not any less devastating. Nobody messed with the Tylers’ children.

 

Rose finally got to the almost-right place, meeting a girl with flames in her hair and in her heart (she loved Donna Nobel almost at once and was so, so, so very glad he’d been travelling with a woman like that). Rose wanted to tell this wonderful woman who she was but knew she could not. And so, Rose became known by a name she half remembered but mostly forgot, unintentionally bringing back history that was fuzziness to her and the most blinding of moments to him. Bad Wolf. Her name blazed across the Doctor’s path, just in case he’d forgotten even a little bit.

 

Before the entire ordeal was over – before all her hard work had finally paid off and then hadn’t but sort of had and she’d fought for so long, how could he _leave her again_? – Rose Tyler was given one more name. She was a Child of Time, just like the rest of them. Like brilliant Donna and emblazoned Martha and _her_ dear Captain Jack. It was a name the people back in her universe – she knew now Pete’s World would forever be hers – would never hear, but one she’d carry on her anyway. Another label, just proving that Shakespeare probably knew what he was talking about when he wrote about roses and names.

 

The Doctor – _her_ Doctor – called her Rose, just like she’d always wanted. But somehow, everybody subconsciously classified it as another label altogether. It was the same thing her family and friends called her, but the way he said it made it altogether different. They said Rose the same way they would for the colour, the flower, somebody else by the same name. The Doctor said it as though it were a spell, a prayer, a secret key to the centre of the universe and everything that was in him.

 

The Doctor’s appearance and his new name for her that was both the same and so very different seemed to put a halt on the names the world had been so happy to make up for her before. One by one, they dwindled until Rosie, Rose, Lieutenant Tyler and Boss were the only that were commonly heard. There was something about the authority with which this man who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere said her name. There was something about the way it seemed to fit her. It was almost as though she’d been trying on identities, letting them all try and place ones on her, until he came up and showed her who she was really supposed to be. Now that she _knew_ , the rest of them could not make another name stick.

 

Until _he_ came.

 

 _He_ was the king of a very sophisticated, very wealthy and thankfully very peaceful race of aliens who decided it would be beneficial for everybody if they traded with Earth. Torchwood had an Alien Languages translator, of course, but sometimes even that wasn’t quite enough. Like when he asked who the yellow and pink girl was who spoke to him with such knowledge and genuine kindness and they told him her name and he was not satisfied. He wanted to know who she _was_. He needed something to compare her to, like his culture stipulated. A little lost, the rest of Torchwood tried to explain Rose. They were fumbling, grasping at straws, trying to make connections that were lost on him.

 

Finally, Jake was allowed to take the lead. And it left their guest smiling.

 

“I see.” His voice was rich and warm and he nodded with his eyes closed, as though categorising something. “She is light to you when you need it, bright and beautiful and helpful and healing. But when you cross those she cares about she is deadly and fast and protective.” There were general mumbles of confused agreement. “Then she is like lightning,” he professed simply. “She is the Lightning of the Oncoming Storm.”

 

Nobody contested that, somehow. And there was something in the Doctor’s eyes when they told him that let them all know this new label for his Rose would be accepted.


End file.
